Workout Week 23–One More Recording Test?

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Once upon a time, I had a single USB hub in my room. This hub had four standard USB ports on it, a mini USB port should I wish to connect it to my computer, and a round power port should I choose instead to connect it to the wall for use as a charger. The USB ports surrounded it in roughly a circle, which given enough space allowed me to spread out the items plugged into it without tangling cords… but lacking that space just made it harder to use all four ports as needed.

That hub is now bagged up and in the pile of things to donate to the local thrift store, and I have four other hubs (three of which can only be used to charge as they each have a permanently-attached wall plug-in) to take its place.

Why is this relevant to a fitness series? Because I finally got my “move in the real-world, move in VR” accessories set up and charging so I can start trying them out on my next day off.

The Cybershoes are hanging from a dual-headphone hanger clipped to my computer desk, with the Aftershokz, FitBit, and Cybershoes Quest adapter all charging from the same hub as the shoes, while the WalkOvr and its bizarre collection of USB cords is occupying space on my filing cabinet next to the Oculus Quest itself and waiting for me to track down a VR stand and suitable shelf so I can get that area organized better. (The 3dRudder is designed to connect to the computer while in use and needs no charging.) The third charging-only USB hub is on my dresser for non-fitness things like my GoPro chargers, a mini air purifier, and the Elder Scrolls themed Black Soul Gem light.

But speaking of VR, I finally tried using my Aftershokz in conjunction with the VR headset to test for sound quality.

The results were… not what I was hoping.

First there is the matter of my voice quality being questionable-at-best. I love these headphones for use as headphones–with my hearing impairment, the bone conduction is the first time I’ve actually been able to hear enough difference in sound quality as to make it worth buying more than “cheap headphones”–but I’ve never needed to use the microphone before so I had no idea what it would sound like if I did. Granted, who knows how much difference there would be in using these to make phone calls versus pairing to my computer, but I’m hearing an awful lot of audible “glitches” while listening to me speak.

Second is the music. The sound effects leading up to starting the game were fine, the volume roughly on par with the microphone picking up my voice, but once the music starts…. either I’ve overlooked a setting or the Aftershokz ability to filter out background noise (that would be going back to the ability to talk on the phone with them) is too good for my purposes. Not a big deal when the game’s audio is just music, you can still hear it well enough to tell what I’m playing, but what about games that involve dialogue? Will that fall under the category of “background noise” or will it actually pick it up well enough to record?

Linking the webcam test from a few weeks ago for comparison:

While I did solve the issue with Bandicam picking up the webcam (well, sort of; Bandicam works when using “XSplit cam” as a middle-man–without enabling the dynamic background removal, so there’s another thing to test once I start trying mixed reality–but is still super laggy when trying to use the webcam directly), I’m thinking this older video sounds a lot better than the newer one.

Unless I come up with another option worth testing, I’ll just rely on the webcam to pick up the audio and leave the Aftershokz for use with Zombies, Run.

My randomizer also told me to give the planking Stealth board another try:

With this video I finally start using my elbow pads to, well, add extra padding; I shake too much when trying to do full-on planks, enough that I don’t think I’d be able to balance trying to do them on this board, but forearm planks always end up hurting my elbows before long. I don’t know how much is improper form (too much weight on the elbows and not enough on the entire forearm, perhaps?) and how much is just me not being accustomed to the exercise, but I bought a pair of padded compression sleeves that I believe are marketed for basketball players to help solve the issue.

Well, I say “pair” but they’re sold singly. Also, if any of my readers/watchers feels the need to use a similar tool, these are sized based on the size of your elbow (or just below) but remember, they are compression sleeves–like me, you may find they fit the elbow perfectly while still finding the bit of fabric that goes on your upper arm being more than a little snug, as evidenced by the fact that I nearly punched myself in the face trying to put one of them on in the video!

This was supposed to be the week I started picking up the pace and doing more workouts per week–one from each system, as far as that goes, rigging the randomizer just enough to make sure that happens while still leaving the actual workout as random as an Excel formula can make it–and as such I got two more workouts in on Thursday.

I just… forgot to render and upload them in time. So between that and other reasons, I’ll just count them as part of the next selection of workouts.

I’ll also need to figure out a good rhythm for uploading one of these days. The time-consuming part of the process means the actual uploading part of uploading will (usually) only happen on my days off–especially in longer videos like those from the Adventure Mode of Ring Fit Adventure!–and of course there is the matter of waiting for YouTube to finish processing them, but as far as publishing and making them public? If I do this right I’ll have four videos a week to post (assuming I don’t do more to account for how short some of those workouts are) but I probably shouldn’t be posting a bunch of videos at once….

And the final update, Zombies Run, I finished the 5K training app!

There seemed to be an odd glitch with the app’s ability to track my progress. Not the usual “the phone going to sleep kills the app’s ability to update” (which I discovered by accident seems to only be a problem with the 5K app and not the main, though as I still need to use the main on a walk it remains to be seen whether other factors are involved), but rather that the app simply never told me that I’d finished.

Here we have screenshots taken after I’d decided I was done pacing in front of my house waiting for the mission to be “complete”–Maggie/Runner 6 had long since welcomed me to the team which, according to this transcript, was the last audio clip in the episode, and the app was just playing music for a while–and ended the mission despite the app warning me I wasn’t actually done. The time I’d been out extended quite a while past the estimated 51 minutes (the dialogue at the beginning and end always makes it take longer, but it’s never been that long), my distance was further than the 5K I was expected to “run” (despite walking it in the allotted time, go figure)… but the progress report and list of episodes still claim I have that one episode to do. Even after manually synchronizing the app it still tells me I haven’t done that episode.

Zombie Link on the other hand, reported it as done, and that, I think, is the more important part.

So it looks like I can safely remove this app from my phone for what little space it will free up.

In the meantime, the run graphics properly posted:

Now that the training storyline is done, I need to figure out how I’m going to work The Walk into my routine. Given that collecting everything requires me to look at my phone, I think I’m going to try it in place of Homefront once I’ve finished those episodes, but it remains to be seen how that will work out.

And speaking of Homefront, this week’s completed workouts:

Would’ve been one more in the Homefront grouping–should’ve been one more–except I had one night where I stayed up later than I realized browsing social media (not even reading a book, which at least would translate to decluttering as it involves tackling the mountain of books on my dresser, but idly browsing the web instead of exercising first like I’m supposed to do) and decided that going to bed so I could be rested in time for work the next morning was higher priority.

Shame on me, right? 😉

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